Learning and Teaching Through Roleplaying Games

I love the fact that tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) like Dungeons & Dragons or D&D can help players to grow as people and to teach important lessons and concepts to people. Playing these games can help players to discover more about themselves while helping them to better navigate and understand potential interactions with others. And much as wargames can help military professionals to learn how to fight and win a battle, a campaign, or a war, roleplaying games can help professionals in other disciplines and fields prepare to find their way through challenging circumstances and situations.

A couple days ago I came across an interesting video on the iPad TED app through which I can access a collection of available TED Talks. This particular TEDx Talk by ethics professor Christopher Robichaud, Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is about how he uses a roleplaying game that he has devised to teach ethics. He discusses how he can do this by putting his participants through a hypothetical pandemic response with the task of tackling an unfolding zombie apocalypse. If you are a fan of zombie fiction, you probably understand that a fictional zombie outbreak can show us just how quickly things in society and government can break down and just how bad things can get if and when society “goes off the rails.” Real-world challenges and concerns can be gamed in a scenario that exists entirely (hopefully) in the world of horror fiction.

I actually own a couple zombie apocalypse TTRPGs that allow the players to play in the role of individual survivors trying to survive another day and perhaps build a community or even rebuild a society from the ruins. But I see no reason why one couldn’t play these games as more powerful, well-connected player characters (PCs) with weighty responsibilities in mounting the emergency services, government, and public health responses to the zombie outbreak. The “Dungeon Master” or “Game Master” (or whatever title is given to the person serving in the administrator/guide/narrator/referee role) might need to do some additional work to account for the change in the scope of the players’ roles, but I see no reason why these games or some adaptation of these games can’t be used to roleplay as those in power trying to respond to an escalating zombie apocalypse.

Knowing the hard choices that often must be made in responding to any unfolding crisis, emergency, or disaster and having lived through the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020, I certainly understand how ethical concerns can be tested and perhaps compromised in those trying to navigate an uncertain and evolving crisis, emergency, or disaster. I hope that leaders and future leaders in the fields of emergency services, government, and public health will use the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and other historic pandemics to roleplay possible responses to future pandemics while keeping an eye on very real and valid ethical concerns.

If you are interested, click on the link below to watch the video posted to YouTube. With some thought and practice you might even learn how to create your own roleplaying game or exercise with which to challenge your students, coworkers, or employees with hypothetical circumstances and situations that may or will arise in the future.

“Morality Play: Dungeons and Dragons and Teaching Ethics | Christopher Robichaud | TEDxWalthamED”

https://youtu.be/gn_d0oHYVCw?si=kCWmzSHhiLh8EeL8